There is an interest in the life sciences in the quantitation of transcription in substantial numbers of single cells in one study. At present, Fluidigm Corporation enables the study of transcription from 96 single cells at a time through the C1™ system “integrated fluidic circuit” (IFC™) microfluidic devices.
Currently available chemistries from commercial sources used to prepare cDNA from single cells for analysis of mRNA transcript levels, usually but not limited to mRNA sequencing, cannot be used in a Fluidigm IFC™ unless there is an addressable outlet well for each single cell. There is no easy way to identify the transcripts from single cells using the commercial kits when the cDNA from each cell is combined together in a pool; this is necessary in Fluidigm IFCs™ developed for more than 96 single cells on the Generation 2 carrier since there are not enough wells to output each discrete single-cell cDNA sample.
If the cDNA is to be sequenced, e.g., using the bridge amplification (cluster generation) and sequencing method commercialized by Illumina, Inc. (San Diego, Calif.), a further problem is the need for individual commercial tagmentation reactions for each cell's cDNA from the 96-cell IFC™ to allow for controlled fragmentation for flow cell clustering and sample identification during sequencing.